GiveForward

In September, a group of board members from Chicago Children’s Charities raised money for their organization using GiveForward’s new Group Pages.

Like a lot of small non-profits, Chicago Children’s Charities had relied primarily on gala and bar event fundraisers, as well as on corporate gifts.  With the tightening economy, many of their board members were having difficulty acquiring the funds they were used to receiving.  So, they decided to put together a team of charity runners to supplement their fundraising efforts.

In just a few weeks, and with very little organized effort, they were able to raise $13,000.

Here is what Ashley Dent, the leader of the charity running team, had to say about Chicago Children’s Charities’ experience on GiveForward.org:

I’m on a board that fundraises for a few children’s charities. In the past, we’ve raised most of our funds through corporations, but we needed some new ways to fundraise this year. I discovered GiveForward, and realized that the site could be a powerful fundraising tool for our board members.

As a board, we participated in GiveForward’s 5k Run for a Reason. Not only did we have a fun running for a great cause (our own!), but we raised over $13,000 on the site in just a few weeks! Each board member took just a few minutes to set up their own personalized fundraising page, asked friends and family for support, and our fundraising quickly took off.

This is one of the few times in life when minimal effort translates into a great reward. Collectively, hundreds of people donated to our charity, but this would not have been possible without the online webpages we created. We will definitely fundraise through GiveForward in the future – it was simple, effective, and enabled us to make a difference in the lives of Chicago’s children.

If you would like to learn more about creating a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign, Kurt Kittner, El Da’Sheon Nix of Cabrini Connections and the founders of GiveForward will be presenting workshops at the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference Nov 19-20.

After graduation, starting kitchens abroad

Courtesy of Anoop Jain.

This cold Evanston winter, Anoop Jain will be homeless.

“I plan on sleeping outside when the weather is not too miserable and crashing at people’s apartments so that I can put whatever I am saving on rent straight in to the donation fund,” Jain says.

“Donation fund” is what Jain, who graduated from McCormick in June, is tending to alongside his engineering career. Since graduation the 22-year-old has been heading a $25,000 fundraiser through GiveForward.org, a local Chicago organization, to build a community kitchen for Tibetan refugees who have escaped to India. So far he has raised nearly $3,000.

“The community kitchen would basically be a place for the Tibetan refugees to come get really cheap healthy food, and then also they could work in the kitchen,” Jain says, “the idea being that if you work in the kitchen or clean dishes, then your food could be even cheaper. It would also serve as a community center for women and children.”

“It was sort of an accident that it happened to be Tibetan refugees. It didn’t matter to me who the people were.”

“One of the big ideas for this organization is Tibetan cultural preservation, so it would really encourage people to cook traditional Tibet food which I think is really important because there’s less and less people cooking that food,” Jain says. “It would be a great place for them to practice it or even give foreigners cooking lessons.”

Jain’s fundraising path to helping others, though, first began with destruction in his own hometown.

“I’m from New Orleans and so after Katrina, I felt the refugee experience first-hand and I was really lucky,” Jain says.

Jain was fortunate enough to have family in Houston, Texas to provide him shelter, but despite his protection, Jain could not stop thinking about those who were not as lucky.

Soon after Katrina, Jain spent the first two months of the summer helping gut houses in New Orleans. There he found a volunteer organization based out of Tulane University that would allow him to teach English to Tibetan refugees in India.

“It was sort of an accident that it happened to be Tibetan refugees,” Jain says. “It didn’t matter to me who the people were.”

Jain spent the summer of 2006 in a town located in the Himalayas named McLeod Ganj, a spot for refugees to escape to during this period of Tibetan and Chinese struggle. He came back to Northwestern with a passion for their cause, which he carried with him through graduation.

Jain works an engineering day job in Northbrook, but has found the balance between work and this fundraising project easier than expected.

“I have always had multiple things going on in life. While I was in school, I was very involved with ASB and WNUR and on top of that I was in McCormick,” Jain says.

“I see working on this project as a break from my day job. I think that working in the corporate world gets very monotonous and so at the end of the day, or even during the day, if I have some time, I always am working on ways to collect more money or spread the word.”

“Originally, I wanted to help them build a radio station,” Jain says. “But my contact there, Ngawang, the program director in India, said, “look, right now what we really need is a kitchen.’”

Because the town is the official home of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government in exile, it’s a very popular tourist site — which drives up the price of food, Jain says. Refugees can’t pay tourist prices, and the high altitude makes transporting food difficult.

“I told my friends in India, ‘Look, once I raise the money, I’m not just sending you the check, I will come with the money and I’m going to stay there until this thing is finished.’”

That’s where Jain comes in. Essentially a one-man fundraiser, Jain has tried to find ways to contact others to spread the word about his cause, but it has been his former and current Northwestern peers whom he has looked to for the most support.

“I just started emailing 90 of my closest friends,” he says. “I just said, ‘look, put this on your Facebook or whatever social network.’ Any working media outlets you use, please use [them]. I just started about a month ago, so it’s in its very early stages.”

Even with this support from friends and a large NU network, though, Jain still faces monetary challenges and realizes that students can only provide to a certain extent.

“I think right now my biggest obstacle is getting people involved. A lot of my good friends are abroad, and while they want to help, there is not much they can do sitting so far away,” Jain says. “Also, since most of the people I have reached out to are either recent graduates or still in school, money is not something they have a lot of.”

While the project is still in the early stages, donations can be made on the its Web site, http://www.giveforward.org/kitchenproject.

If and when the fundraising goal is reached, Jain will be leaving the Midwest altogether.

“I told my friends in India,” Jain says, “‘Look, once I raise the money, I’m not just sending you the check, I will come with the money and I’m going to stay there until this thing is finished.’”

Recently, we had the chance to talk with one of our amazing users who had this to say about GiveForward:

My experience with Giveforward.org

I recently was moved to start a fundraiser to benefit a 4 yr old little girl who is a friend of my daughters as she was recently diagnosed with Leukemia. I was aware of many charitable organizations out there that were developed to support specific medical research needs; however I felt that if I were to personally solicit friends and family to support my efforts for a fund raiser that I would like Liana and her family to benefit directly from the proceeds. My husband and I were already committed to running the Chicago marathon and we thought this was a perfect opportunity to combine our efforts with Giveforward.  In this difficult economy, the medical expenses this family has faced have been exorbitant, and they are so grateful for our support.

Thanks to Giveforward.org we were able to surpass our goal and raise over $3,000 that Liana’s family can use towards her chemotherapy treatments. Thank you so much for providing this tremendous service! It made it so easy to raise money for a great cause.

-          Katherine

As always, we love to hear when a GiveForward community member has a great experience, but Katherine went one step further to share her thoughts on GiveForward with the editors at Real Simple magazine in the following letter:

Hello Real Simple Editor Staff,

My name is Kate and I have been a subscriber and reader of Real Simple Magazine since its inception. I am writing to you on my own initiative and unsolicited from the Organization that I’m writing to you about, as I have been so impressed with the mission and support it provides.

If you have not already heard about them, I suggest that you visit www.giveforward.org, which is an organization that allows individuals to set up a fundraiser online that is not necessarily affiliated to a designated organized charity. I have a neighbor whose 4 year old daughter was recently afflicted with Leukemia. I know finances were tight for them in this tough economical times and as my husband and I were running the Chicago marathon in Oct 2009, we wanted to set up an individual fund raiser on behalf of Liana (my neighbor’s 4 year old). I knew there were many charities out there that support Leukemia and/or Children’s Leukemia, which is a fabulous pursuit, but the purpose of my initiative was to try and specifically generate funds which all proceeds would go directly to this afflicted family to help support medical expenses they have incurred.

The site does allow you to affiliate with organized charities if you choose to do so, and it only makes 3% from the donations raised through its site to help maintain and support the site operate.

I was truly impressed with Give Forward, and I think as a new online service company that works for a great cause, I felt it would be something of interest to Real Simple to cover in a future editorial as there are so many individuals out there who could benefit from setting up their own fund raiser in this manner.

I hope you take the time to investigate this organization’s mission and purpose as I found it to be a tremendous resource for our purposes and we were successful in raising over $3,000 for Liana’s treatments.

Sincerely,

Kate

When a friend or loved one gets sick or goes through a particularly hard time, we all react differently.  Some of us shower that person with attention, phone calls, and offers to cook dinner or drive to appointments.  Others send flowers and a heartfelt card expressing our sympathy or inspiring our friends to rise to the challenge ahead.  Then there are those of us that recoil, avoid calling, emailing, or stopping by, all the while letting the guilt of our inactions pile on.

Likely, we have all found ourselves responding in more than one of the above ways.  But the reality is that each one of these reactions stems from a feeling of helplessness—fear that we cannot help a person that we love out of the situation they are in.  So, we respond in the way we were taught, or in the way we would like to be treated, or we don’t respond at all and try to deny that this terrible thing is happening to someone close to us.

At GiveForward, we hear stories every day of people battling an illness or battling the financial burden that an illness has caused.  Often, the problem is insurance related, and a friend or family member needs money to have a lifesaving procedure or needs to be released from the insurmountable debt that such procedures have put them under.

We knew when we started GiveForward that there were hundreds of thousands of people each year in this position.  In fact, the ability to fundraise for medical expenses is one of the main reasons GiveForward allows people to raise money even if they are not a non-profit.  So, we were not surprised when medical expenses fundraisers began to accelerate on the site.  But what has shocked us is the role that these fundraisers are playing in the lives of the people who love and care about the person battling or recovering.

Nearly every day now, we receive letters of gratitude…not from the people receiving money but from friends and family who feel empowered by the ability to share in their loved one’s struggle.  It’s not about the money.  It’s about the knowledge that they can be a piece of making someone they care about’s life a little bit better.

Even if fundraising isn’t the answer, if you have a friend or loved one experiencing a particularly rough patch right now, you’re probably not alone in recognizing it.  Get together with friends and find a way to help him or her…you’ll be amazed how strong you will all feel in the end.

On Thursday, September 10th nearly 200 socially minded party-goers enjoyed open bar and tasty hors d’oeuvres courtesy of GiveForward.org and Old Town Social, Chicago’s latest hot spot.

Attendees included our charity partners: Chicago Children’s Charities, PFLAG, Southwest Youth Collaborative, Volunteer Expeditions, Chicago Inner City Outings, and Midwest Young Artists along with a mix of young Chicago professionals.

See NBC’s coverage of the party here![youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpKly8Kfj3w[/youtube]

Don’t worry, if you missed this event, you can still come to the next one…The Ugly Sweater Pub Crawl!

The sun wasn’t the only thing shining last Sunday.  On September 13, 2009, 30 young, philanthropically minded Chicagoans donned electric yellow Run 4 a Reason tees and hit the pavement with nearly 20,000 runners at the Chicago Half Marathon and 5K.

Each had their own reason to run.  Some ran to green Chicago’s streets, others ran to support Chicago volunteers heading to Katrina affected cities, while others ran to support equal rights for all.  But the true champions of the day were the 16 runners from Chicago Children’s Charities who raised more than $12,000 for ten local charities. read more…

Imagine it. One day a year when people focus on giving. One day when people across the United States can join together to make a difference. One day, where every person, regardless of age or income level, can collectively have a huge impact. Whether people give money, time, resources, or random acts of kindness, it all helps.

This is GiveForward’s goal for National Give Day. GiveForward.org is a website that provides free personal fundraising pages so they can collect donations from friends and family all across the country towards their own great cause. For the next 10 months, we will be collecting signatures online and in person to try to get the Mayor of Chicago, Richard M. Daley, to announce May 4th, 2010 as National Give Day. Please sign our petition. read more…

On September 13th, 2009, GiveForward.org and 200 young professionals will run in the Chicago Half Marathon and 5k as part of GiveForward.org’s Run for a Reason, a fundraising competition and celebration of Chicago’s amazing smaller non-profit community.

Our goal is to help raise as much money for Chicago charities as possible while showing the Chicago community how important young philanthropists are to these organizations.  This year, 200 young professionals, volunteers, junior board members, and non-profit staff will compete for a grand prize that will go to the winning team’s organization. read more…

People have called GiveForward a “social networking site for fundraising,” and whenever they do, we’re pretty quick to correct them.  Our main reason is that most social networking sites are comprised of predominantly passive users…i.e. people that only half-heartedly contribute to the community.

With fundraising, the last thing you want to see is 12,000 supporters but only $150 in donations, which is what you get on other sites (ahem Facebook Causes).  That’s why we really encourage our users to actively ask their friends and family for money…not support.

Sure, you might use the language “please support me in my efforts.”  But at the end of the day what you really need is a donation.

Here are a couple of tips from Joanne Fritz, author at about.com, on how to get a donation vs. support:

• Create a sense of urgency by citing a deadline , or tie your request a particular holiday. Repeat your argument for urgency both in the text of the email but also in a P.S. and follow up emails.
• Be explicit when asking for money. Example: Send a special gift today of $25 or more. Be clear and repeat some variation of the message throughout the email.

Other ways to get your friends to donate include:

• Making a goal of $1 per friend and following up with those that haven’t given…who can’t afford $1?
• Promising to do something crazy/funny/ridiculous if you get to a certain goal by a certain time
• Offering prizes for donors who give within a certain window of time

The goal here is to get everyone you know to open their hearts and wallets for you.  You know what motivates the people you care about…use that knowledge for good!